Metamorphoses – Ovid

I ordered this from a bookshop not realising that Penguin use the Golding translation that was so influential on Shakespeare rather than a modern version, so I ended up reading a 16th Century academic translating a 1st Century, 500 page poem. Not the lightest read of my life, but I’ve had worse.

It’s a kind of Greco-Roman mythology greatest hits album, taking us from the creation to Julius Caesar via Perseus, Daedalus, Orpheus, Achilles and the rest. There’s a lot of material to enjoy, and it canters along nicely.

I was struck by the way that the pre-Christian moral framework values achievement and passion over more contemporary “heroic” values such as defending the weak.